A Week's Work in the Kitchen

Baking is my current obsession. As soon as I received my copy of VCTOTW, I had picked out several cupcake recipes, like Peanut Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache.



Mmmmm, good. Of course I’m a peanut butter/chocolate fan. And Basic Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Buttercream.



Sensing a theme here?

This was my first experiment with piping. I used molasses in the icing, which I wouldn’t do again because the molasses flavour was strong.

Princess created her own.



And a customized colour for each member of the household (dogs not included).



Smarties are not vegan, so let’s call them “inedible decorations”. Princess got the idea from the photo of the Chocolate Mint Cupcakes on pg 74.

Obsessions grow and mutate, and soon I had plucked a bread machine recipe book from the library shelves. Several loaves of bread popped out, such as Autumn Pumpkin Bread.



The only fall meal that I think of when bread is baking is soup. This one is “Creamy” Mushroom Soup from The Vegetarian 5-ingredient Gourmet:



The cool teen who is vehemently opposed to the presence of tofu on the table didn’t even realize that it was the ingredient that gave the soup it’s creaminess. Don’t tell her.

Here is a vegan version of French Onion Soup from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s kitchen.



We only had one bottle of red wine in the house (what’s going on???) and it was a good one. There are one and a half cups of it in the soup. There are a whopping five, count ‘em FIVE huge red onions in there. Great soup. I did notice at work the next day that my coat smelled of onions. I imagine the house reeks of onions. But onions, red wine and fresh bread? You can’t go wrong.

We got a whack of red, yellow and orange peppers on sale, so planned for the end of the week is a Roasted Pepper soup from Vegetable Soups.

And last but not least – Princess’s request from The Vegetarian 5-ingredient Gourmet that we call Green Noodles, which is actually Contemporary Creamed Spinach over pasta. The first time that I made it I used green swiss chard, which I actually preferred over the spinach version. And the first time I used fresh tofu from Chinatown, while this time I used Mori-Nu tofu from the grocery store shelf. You could tell the difference, nothing beats the real thing.